Perseids: The meteor shower believed to be Saint Lawrence’s tears
We have all grown up hearing and singing the famous nursery rhyme Twinkle Twinkle Little Star and since then have been fascinated with the night sky and everything that appears on it. Now, if you come to think of it, that doesn’t just include stars, but also the moon, the comets, the asteroids and of course, meteors.
People who have experienced meteor shower will tell you that it is something like a fast-moving streak of light (like moving fireballs) that appears in the night sky. Better known as shooting star or falling star, meteors occur whenever any extra-terrestrial matter (metals or rocks from the space) enters the Earth’s atmosphere. While there are different kinds of meteor showers such as Geminids, Leonids, and Lyrids, it is perhaps the Perseids that is the most famous. Christians believe that this meteor shower represents the tears of martyred Saint Lawrence.
Perseids: A bird’s eye view
Perseids occurs annually between 17th July and 24th August primarily in the Northern Hemisphere. It usually reaches its peak on 10th or 12th August travelling at a whooping speed of 80 kilometres per second. Astronomers suggest that as many as 100 Perseids appear every hour during its peak. It derives its name from the Perseus constellation (more specifically Perseidai, the son of Greek mythical hero Perseus). Why? Because it appears to be lying near or within the constellation itself. Although it is named after the Perseus constellation, it had emerged out of a comet named Swift-Tuttle. Do you know what a comet is? It is a celestial body comprising of ice, dust and gas, that orbits around the Sun and gets pushed around by the solar wind, especially in the ‘tail’ region. Hereby, the comet often ends up releasing gas, a process called outgassing.
Discovery of Perseids
The Swift-Tuttle comet has been outgassing since millions of years that has created a stream of debris around its orbit and came to look like a cloud. Eventually, astronomers named it as the Perseid Cloud as it resembled the shape of the Perseus constellation. In 36 AD, a group of ancient Roman astronomers first identified this phenomenon.
Fast forward to the 19th century, a Belgian mathematician, sociologist and astronomer named Adolphe Quetelet was studying the Swift-Tuttle comet closely when he accidentally came upon a passing streak of light that seemed to emerge from the comet site. When he delved deeper sitting inside the Brussels Observatory in 1835, he realised that it was a meteor! Upon further analysis, he realised that it radiated out of the comet but offered the illusion that it emanated from the Perseus constellation. Since the cloud around the comet was already named as Perseids, he decided to go along with the same name for the meteor shower too.
The legend of Saint Lawrence
On 10th august 258 AD, Saint Lawrence of Rome was martyred for his Catholic faith as commissioned by the then Roman Emperor Valerian, who was a pagan. Since then, his followers from the Catholic community have believed that the tears of the martyr are suspended in the sky and return to the Earth every year on the day of his persecution. There are others who also believe that since the saint was burned alive on a gridiron, the shooting stars are the sparks of his martyrdom. Legends also have it that on the night of 10th August, cooled embers appear on the ground at the site of his execution to provide his soul some respite. The natives call it “the coal of Saint Lawrence.”